Focus on team science ‘ideology’ could ruin REF, warns former v-c

Downgrading the importance of outputs in the next Research Excellence Framework in favour of rewarding team science risks undermining the exercise’s core purpose as a guarantor of academic standards, a former vice-chancellor has warned.

In a Higher Education Policy Institute paper published on 2 November, Sir Nigel Thrift, who led the University of Warwick for nearly a decade until July 2016, says he was “more than a bit nervous” about the proposed REF 2028 which will reduce the weighting of research outputs from 60 per cent to below 50 per cent, and “in extremis…might be as little as 40 per cent” while also removing the direct link between outputs and individuals.

That decision to “downgrade academic judgement to the point where less than half of the outcome of the REF will rest on assessments of academic products” marked a symbolic “tipping point” that may alarm Whitehall and Parliament, explains Sir Nigel.

“In effect, the importance of academic research standards is being sidelined,” he continues, remarking that the reforms will undermine the “primary function” of the REF as an “accountability mechanism…to justify efficient use of the public funds invested in universities”.

“Moving the exercise away from outputs and simultaneously away from individuals is a potential double whammy when it comes to attracting increased government support,” continues Sir Nigel.

Describing the proposed design of REF 2028 as “genuinely shocking”, Sir Nigel suggests that those who are “reinventing” the REF may have become complacent about the need to demonstrate the quality of British academic research.

It was possible “they thought that it was a slam dunk that UK research outcomes were so good that they did not need demonstrating again and it was therefore possible to move on to other issues”, he says, despite growing concerns that UK research is falling behind competitor countries in key areas.

“There is a danger that the government will become less enthusiastic about research investment when the Research Excellence Framework’s primary purpose – rewarding outputs – is devalued. One of the main lines of defence for the research carried out by British universities will have been removed as will one of the main arguments for increased investment,” he adds.

The proposed reforms to the REF – which will see research culture attain the same 25 per cent weighting as impact – will also prove unpopular with academics whose “outputs – the outputs you have poured blood, sweat and tears into – are in danger of becoming just a footnote to the main event”, says the noted human geographer, who is now a government adviser on nuclear waste disposal.

A desire to encourage and reward “team science” has been a key driver of the reforms, explains Sir Nigel. However, there is a danger in “unknowingly perhaps, [attempting] to impose solutions to complaints made chiefly about the working norms of empirical science and medicine on all disciplines”, he argues, stating the “quasi-industrial character” of medical and scientific research was not found in most research areas.

Trying to impose a “one-size-fits-all” model of team science on disciplines in the social sciences and humanities where researchers do not typically work in large teams, and outputs were often done by lone individuals, risked “turning observations of team science into a fixed ideology”, says Sir Nigel.

In this respect, there was a “degree of mission creep within UK Research and Innovation at least as displayed in REF2028”, which suggests it “now wants to tell some of the leading research universities in the world how that research should be done”.

Its “mission creep” is “on a sufficient scale that one could argue that it is in danger of becoming a de facto regulator, intervening more and more directly in the workings of universities, just like the Office for Students”, he adds.

He also criticised the “limited consultation” with research universities around the REF 2028, noting its “main contours (‘initial decisions’)…were announced and there is no real opportunity to object to them in the consultation”, although a “degree of negotiation” has since emerged via an expanded consultation process.

Guided by a “new and potentially dangerous orthodoxy based on what might be portrayed as a turn inwards”, the proposed REF 2028 – which rejected further use of metrics to assess research – could ironically see university managers “increasingly bypass the REF” and “turn to measures of individuals like citations which are clearly much more problematic as a means of assessing academic contributions”, he says.

Welcoming Sir Nigel’s essay, HEPI’s director Nick Hillman said the “thoughts of an experienced and well-respected former vice-chancellor” would contribute to a “crucial debate” about the direction of UK research funding.

“Britain’s place as a science superpower depends above all on having the right research environment in place,” said Mr Hillman. “Exactly what that should look like and whether it is best encouraged by measuring outputs or in other ways is the sort of question on which wise heads may differ but it does need to be openly and urgently discussed.”

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com